One of my family’s favorite vegetables is kale. I got a 25 pound case of kale recently for 50 cents a pound. What will I do with all that kale? Fresh kale salad, dehydrated kale, kale pesto, kale gratin, and I will pressure can kale for even more uses. The great thing about canned kale, is it’s perfectly cooked for a quick dish – – silky soft and ready to eat.

I’ve decided peaches are now my favorite fruit. I don’t like anything overly sweet, and peaches have just amount of tang to offset the sweetness. Nectarines are pretty similar, and are preferred by my older daughter, because she is adverse to the fuzz. Apparently, she isn’t the only one. Unable to develop a fuzzless peach, the peach industry created a machine to mechanically brush off most of the fuzz. After this, the sale of peaches rose 50 percent. And although Georgia is known as “the peach state,” they don’t have anything on Washington State peaches.

Some of my favorite home canned convenience foods are ground beef, turkey and chicken. People tell me they are too afraid of killing someone to can meat. I inform these cautious canners death is just as certain from an improperly canned slice of carrot. More people get sick on packaged foods and grocery store produce than home canned goods. You almost never hear of home canned goods causing illness. You just have to follow instructions, like you would cooking with any method.

When my kids don’t like a vegetable, I don’t give up. I make it several different ways, and sometimes even wait a couple years before re-introduction. I’m my kids’ nutritionist, and I’m putting the effort in now to set them up for a lifetime of enjoying a variety of healthy foods. It’s true everyone won’t like everything, but I gotta try, right? Giving up can lead to picky eaters, which is no fun for anyone. This past year was my victory in regards to summer squash. Neither of my kids liked it before, but they finally like it, after years of re-introduction. It’s worth it, especially because sometimes I can get a 20 pound box for $5 like I did this past weekend.

I love Aldi. In fact, I haven’t been to the farmers market in almost 2 months because I’m getting such good deals at Aldi. It’s been awhile since pineapples have been 99 cents each, so I had to stock up. I dehydrated four pineapples, made 5 pints of crushed pineapple, and canned several quarts of pineapple chunks. I actually have 4 more to dehydrate – – I put them in the fridge to slow ripening until I returned from a camping trip.

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